Books by Roald Dahl THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE ESIO TROT FANTASTIC MR FOX THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME THE MAGIC FINGER THE TWITS For older readers THE BFG BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD BOY and GOING SOLO CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE AND MR WILLY WONKA DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD GEORGE’S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE GOING SOLO JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH MATILDA THE WITCHES Picture books DIRTY BEASTS (with Quentin Blake) THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE (with Quentin Blake) THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME (with Quentin Blake) THE MINPINS (with Patrick Benson) REVOLTING RHYMES (with Quentin Blake) Plays THE BFG: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: A PLAY (Adated by Richard George) FANTASTIC MR FOX: A PLAY (Adapted by Sall Reid) JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George) THE TWITS: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) THE WITCHES: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) Teenage ction THE GREAT AUTOMATIC GRAMMATIZATOR AND OTHER STORIES RHYME STEW SKIN AND OTHER STORIES THE VICAR OF NIBBLESWICKE THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR AND SIX MORE PUFFIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Oces: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England punbooks.com First published in the USA 1966 Published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin 1968 Published in Pun Books 1974 Reissued with new illustrations 1995 This edition published 2008 3 Text copyright © Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd, 1966 Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 1995 All rights reserved The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-14-195711-1 This book is for Ophelia and Lucy The farm next to ours is owned by Mr and Mrs Gregg. The Greggs have two children, both of them boys. Their names are Philip and William. Sometimes I go over to their farm to play with them. I am a girl and I am eight years old. Philip is also eight years old. William is three years older. He is ten. What? Oh, all right, then. He is eleven. Last week, something very funny happened to the Gregg family. I am going to tell you about it as best I can. Now the one thing that Mr Gregg and his two boys loved to do more than anything else was to go hunting. Every Saturday morning they would take their guns and go o into the woods to look for animals and birds to shoot. Even Philip, who was only eight years old, had a gun of his own. I can’t stand hunting. I just can’t stand it. It doesn’t seem right to me that men and boys should kill animals just for the fun they get out of it. So I used to try to stop Philip and William from doing it. Every time I went over to their farm I would do my best to talk them out of it, but they only laughed at me. I even said something about it once to Mr Gregg, but he just walked on past me as if I weren’t there. Then, one Saturday morning, I saw Philip and William coming out of the woods with their father, and they were carrying a lovely young deer. This made me so cross that I started shouting at them. The boys laughed and made faces at me, and Mr Gregg told me to go home and mind my own P’s and Q’s. Well, that did it! I saw red. And before I was able to stop myself, I did something I never meant to do. I PUT THE MAGIC FINGER ON THEM ALL! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I even put it on Mrs Gregg, who wasn’t there. I put it on the whole Gregg family. For months I had been telling myself that I would never put the Magic Finger upon anyone again – not after what happened to my teacher, old Mrs Winter. Poor old Mrs Winter. One day we were in class, and she was teaching us spelling. ‘Stand up,’ she said to me, ‘and spell cat.’ ‘That’s an easy one,’ I said. ‘K-a-t.’ ‘You are a stupid little girl!’ Mrs Winter said. ‘I am not a stupid little girl!’ I cried. ‘I am a very nice little girl!’ ‘Go and stand in the corner,’ Mrs Winter said. Then I got cross, and I saw red, and I put the Magic Finger on Mrs Winter good and strong, and almost at once… Guess what? Whiskers began growing out of her face! They were long black whiskers, just like the ones you see on a cat, only much bigger. And how fast they grew! Before we had time to think, they were out to her ears! Of course the whole class started screaming with laughter, and then Mrs Winter said, ‘Will you be so kind as to tell me what you nd so madly funny, all of you?’ And when she turned around to write something on the blackboard we saw that she had grown a tail as well! It was a huge bushy tail! I cannot begin to tell you what happened after that, but if any of you are wondering whether Mrs Winter is quite all right again now, the answer is No. And she never will be. The Magic Finger is something I have been able to do all my life. I can’t tell you just how I do it, because I don’t even know myself. But it always happens when I get cross, when I see red… Then I get very, very hot all over… Then the tip of the forenger of my right hand begins to tingle most terribly… And suddenly a sort of ash comes out of me, a quick ash, like something electric. It jumps out and touches the person who has made me cross… And after that the Magic Finger is upon him or her, and things begin to happen… Well, the Magic Finger was now upon the whole of the Gregg family, and there was no taking it o again. I ran home and waited for things to happen. They happened fast. I shall now tell you what those things were. I got the whole story from Philip and William the next morning, after it was all over. In the afternoon of the very same day that I put the Magic Finger on the Gregg family, Mr Gregg and Philip and William went out hunting once again. This time they were going after wild ducks, so they headed towards the lake. In the rst hour they got ten birds. In the next hour they got another six. ‘What a day!’ cried Mr Gregg. ‘This is the best yet!’ He was beside himself with joy. Just then four more wild ducks ew over their heads. They were ying very low. They were easy to hit. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! went the guns. The ducks ew on. ‘We missed!’ said Mr Gregg. ‘That’s funny.’ Then, to everyone’s surprise, the four ducks turned around and came ying right back to the guns. ‘Hey!’ said Mr Gregg. ‘What on earth are they doing? They are really asking for it this time!’ He shot at them again. So did the boys. And again they all missed! Mr Gregg got very red in the face. ‘It’s the light,’ he said. ‘It’s getting too dark to see. Let’s go home.’ So they started for home, carrying with them the sixteen birds they had shot before. But the four ducks would not leave them alone. They now began ying around and around the hunters as they walked away. Mr Gregg did not like it one bit. ‘Be o!’ he cried, and he shot at them many more times, but it was no good. He simply could not hit them. All the way home those four ducks ew around in the sky above their heads, and nothing would make them go away. Late that night, after Philip and William had gone to bed, Mr Gregg went outside to get some wood for the re. He was crossing the yard when all at once he heard the call of a wild duck in the sky.